Facebook Opens Its Pages As a Way to Fuel Growth — Facebook Inc. has bucked the Silicon Valley acquisition trend, remaining independent of larger technology companies. Now the social-networking start-up is seeking ways to reach the big leagues on its own.

Facebook Moving to An Open Platform Strategy — So says WSJ, jumping on an upcoming announcement it says will happen Thursday: Facebook will announce a new strategy to let other companies provide their services on special pages within its site, moving beyond its basic social networking service.

Google News: The End of News Indexing As We Know It? — Scotland's Sunday Herald is running a story reporting that Google has secretly reached deals with several large UK news groups to formally license content for Google News. — The report notes that the deals are being kept secret …

Google, Salesforce.com Weigh Alliance to Battle Microsoft — Internet giant Google Inc. and Salesforce.com Inc., a pioneer in online services for businesses, are discussing an alliance that could help them compete more effectively with Microsoft Corp., according to people familiar with the matter.

What If Every Child Had A Laptop? — Lesley Stahl Reports On The Dream And The Difficulties Of Getting A Computer To Every Child — (CBS) Nicholas Negroponte, a professor at MIT, had a dream. In it every child on the planet had his own computer. In that way, he figured …

'$100 laptop' sparks war of words — Chip-maker Intel "should be ashamed of itself" for efforts to undermine the $100 laptop initiative, according to its founder Nicholas Negroponte. — He accused Intel of selling its own cut-price laptop - the Classmate - below cost to drive him out of markets.

Equity Firms to Buy Alltel in $27.5 Billion Deal — Alltel, the wireless phone company, agreed last night to be sold to a consortium of private equity firms for $27.5 billion, marking the largest buyout ever in the telecommunications industry. — The consortium includes the Texas Pacific Group …

Wi-Fi: a warning signal — Britain is in the grip of a Wi-Fi revolution with offices, homes and classrooms going wireless - but there is concern the technology could carry health risks. — The Government insists Wi-Fi is safe, but a Panorama investigation shows that radio frequency radiation levels …

Salesforce.com launches SOA in the cloud (InfoWorld) — San Francisco (InfoWorld) - With the announcement of Salesforce SOA, Salesforce.com promises "SOA as a service." That's an awfully grandiose claim as SOA is a business-driven approach to organizing an entire enterprise's software functionality, not any one vendor's technology.

Free Subtitles = Two Years In Jail? — from the but-why? dept — This one was submitted last week, and a few other sites had stories about it late last week or over the weekend, but the more I thought about it, the more ridiculous it became. It's the story of a group of folks …

No plans to bring 80GB PS3 to Europe, says Sony — Information on Korean site confirmed — A Sony spokesperson has confirmed to GamesIndustry.biz that an 80GB PlayStation 3 is to go on sale in Korea - but said there are currently no plans to launch the model in Europe.

Don't look now, but Tablet PCs are on the rise — Derided by some and purchased by even fewer, the Tablet PC concept has had a rough go of it since its formal blessing by Microsoft in the form of Windows XP Tablet Edition in 2002. Pen-based computing is significantly older than that …

Google May Launch Mobile Service In UK — We've heard from a good source in the mobile industry that Google may be preparing to launch its own branded mobile network in the UK in the next few weeks. If our source is accurate, Google will become a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) via a deal with UK mobile phone company O2.

Link by Link: Firefox and the Anxiety of Growing Pains — IF the open-source software movement were an upstart political campaign, Chris Messina would be one of its community organizers — the young volunteer who decamps to New Hampshire, knocking on doors, putting up signs.